The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.